Microsoft, Nvidia to invest in Anthropic as Claude maker commits $30 billion to Azure

(Reuters) -Microsoft and Nvidia plan to invest in Anthropic under a new tie-up that includes a $30 billion commitment by the Claude maker to use Microsoft's cloud services, the latest high-profile deal binding together major players in the AI industry. Nvidia will commit as much as $10 billion to Anthropic and Microsoft up to $5 billion, the companies said on Tuesday, without sharing more details including on the timeline. The announcement underscores the AI industry's insatiable appetite for computing power as companies race to build systems that can rival or surpass human intelligence. It also ties major OpenAI-backer Microsoft as well as key AI chip supplier Nvidia closer to one of the ChatGPT maker's biggest rivals. "We're very excited to get additional capacity that we can use both to train our models to support Microsoft first party products and to sell together," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a YouTube video accompanying the announcement. The move comes just weeks after OpenAI unveiled a $38 billion deal to buy cloud services from Amazon.com in its first big push to power its AI ambitions after a restructuring that gave the ChatGPT maker greater operational and financial freedom. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said the startup is committed to spending $1.4 trillion to develop 30 gigawatts of computing resources – enough to roughly power 25 million U.S. homes. Still, three years after ChatGPT's debut, investors are increasingly uneasy that the AI boom has outrun fundamentals. Some business leaders have noted that circular deals – where one partner props up another's revenue – add to the bubble risk. A few large investors have recently dumped some of their AI holdings, stoking fears that a market selloff is imminent. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel's hedge fund sold its entire stake in Nvidia in the third quarter, as has SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, although he has plowed those returns into a massive bet on OpenAI. (Reporting by Aditya Soni and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

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